The history of Cultural Marxism
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Critical Race Theory. Cultural Marxism Next, Lindsay goes into the history of the development of Cultural Marxism: we had a Russian Revolution in 1917 but the revolution did not spread to Europe: which confused the Marxists there. Antonio Gramsci:[1] founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party, and George Lukacs: the Hungarian Marxist philosopher who published History and Class Consciousness[2] after the failure of the revolution in Hungary in 1919, wrote about what became Cultural Marxism:[3] ‘the idea that we have to enter the cultural institutions in order to change them from within, because Western culture has something about it that’s repelling socialism. So we have to go inside and change the culture to make it socialist.’[4] Cultural Marxism evolved out of economic Marxism, Lindsay says, ‘like a virus adapted to infect a new host.’ Marxist revolution had worked in agriculturally-driven feudal societies: it had taken over in Russia, and later in China: but when it came to actual capitalist nations there seemed to be a hurdle, because, as Max Horkheimer proposed, Marx was wrong about one thing: capitalism does not immiserate the worker, it allows him to build a better life. Horkheimer thought the Revolution wouldn’t happen with guns, but through cultural infiltration: ‘… rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism. So I developed the critical theory because it is not possible to articulate the vision of a good society on the terms of the existing society, so critical Marxism criticizes the entirety of the existing society, everything is somehow needing to be subjected to Marxist conflict analysis.’[5] Several Germans from the Frankfurt School started to study this phenomenon in more depth and evolved the idea further: into what’s called Critical Theory. ‘Max Horkheimer first defined critical theory in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory”, as a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole, in contrast to traditional theory oriented only toward understanding or explaining it. Wanting to distinguish critical theory as a radical, emancipatory form of Marxist philosophy, Horkheimer critiqued both the model of science put forward by logical positivism, and what he and his colleagues saw as the covert positivism[6] and authoritarianism of orthodox Marxism and Communism.’[7] Thus, there evolved what’s called Critical Marxism: Horkenheim assumes that ‘the weak’ have no choice but to submit :...
Critical race theory
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Woke as Maoism with American Characteristics. Whiteness as Property In 1993, James Lindsay explains, Cheryl Harris wrote a long article for the Harvard Law Review called ‘Whiteness as Property,’[1] in which she proposed that whiteness or white privilege constitutes a kind of cultural private property. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx said that communism could be summarized in a single sentence: ‘the abolition of private property.’ This is why critical race theory thinks whiteness must be abolished in order to have racial justice. Lindsay: ‘People who have access to this property are whites, or white adjacent, or they act white. … People without that are people of colour and they are oppressed by systemic racism. Systemic racism is enforced by an ideology of white supremacy. Instead of capitalism, if you think of whiteness as a form of cultural capital, white supremacy, as they define it, is identical to capitalism. ‘It’s not believing that white people are superior, it’s believing that white people have access to the control of society and should maintain that. Even if you don’t actually believe that, if you merely support that, you have adopted the ideology of white supremacy into your mind. And so, you have the exact same system. And the goal is to awaken a racial consciousness in people so that they will band together as a class and seize the means of cultural production, so that white cultural production is no longer the dominant mode. ‘I know in the UK, throughout Europe, I hear this question again and again, why on Earth is this very American phenomenon about slavery and so on, that doesn’t apply to our country, why is it popular here. It’s because it’s not about history at all, it’s not about slavery at all, those are excuses that they use. It’s about creating a class consciousness that’s against this form of property called whiteness, that’s against the dominant culture. That may just be a matter of fact, say if you’re in Europe, that’s why because it becomes a site by which people can come together, and they can channel resentment and try to claim power.’[2] Recapping James’ points, Jake says: that ‘Marxism transcends economics, and even transcends social theory, the theory of Marxism bears a religious-like structure that can be extrapolated across all domains of life. And he used the example of private property, which if taken literally means a physical asset but that idea can be extrapolated to the idea of whiteness as...
Woke as Maoism with American characteristics
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from Ideas without a Ground. James Lindsay European Parliament talk James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories and Race Marxism– recently gave a talk at the European Parliament on Woke Ideology, which Jake from Rattlesnake TV comments on in his YouTube video James Lindsay SHATTERS Woke Ideology: EU Parliament Speech.[1] Lindsay’s thesis is as follows: He says Woke is supposed to advance equity in Europe, and he presents the definition of equity written by a man named George Frederickson: ‘an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal’[2] and asks if it sounds like a definition of anything else we’ve ever heard of, like socialism. ‘They’re going to administer an economy to make shares equal.’[3] ‘The only difference between equity and socialism is the type of property that they redistribute, the type of shares they’re going to redistribute, social and cultural capital in addition to economic and material capital and so this is my thesis: when we say what is woke, woke is Maoism with American characteristics. If I might borrow from Mao himself, who said to his philosophy was Marxism Leninism with Chinese characteristics, which means woke is Marxism and it’s a very provocative statement. It’s something you will certainly hear. It is not that it is different, and the professors and the philosophers will spend a large amount of time explaining to you why no, no, it’s about economics when it’s Marxism.’[4] Lindsay claims that Woke is no different from Marxism: he says that when we study animals we classify them at different levels: the cat is at the level of genus, but within that genus are all the different species of cat: lions, tigers, leopards and so on, suggesting that: ‘If we think of Marxism as a genus of ideological thought, the classical economic Marxism is a species, radical feminism is a species in this same genus, critical race theory is a genus, or sorry, a species in this genus. Queer theory is a species in this genus, postcolonial theory that’s plaguing Europe is a species in this genus, and they have something that binds them together called intersectionality, that makes them treat it as if they are all one thing, but the logic is Marxist.’[5] Jake provides context: ‘Karl Marx was a 19th century philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Capital and his work obviously inspired the revolutions led by Vladimir Lenin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot and more. …’ ‘… the idea of...
Ideas without a ground
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 4: ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows on from The Academic Mindset. Ungrounded ideas I think that all academics do know—on some deep level within their souls—that their academic objectivity is of limited value: in the sense all ideas are useless without ‘a ground’. What I mean is that—respecting the Law of Conditionality—no idea exists in a vacuum. The idea that they do is a dangerous idea in itself—to imagine that ideas can live in a self-referential world of their own (without consequences) itself has negative consequences: ideas must always be tested by their actual effect on the world. Marxism is a good example: it is based on a simple, appealing, idea about economics: Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfil human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organizing production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”[1] ‘These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at the level of class struggle.[2] Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another, a Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution. In a socialist society, private property—as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use.’[3] We can see how, within the confines of its own argument, much...
Super Stimulation Week
Permission has been sought from Erasmus University Rotterdam to use the image of Wim Hof in an ice bath Are we stimulated enough? When the subject of meditation is brought up, many people think in terms of relaxation, but relaxation is only half of the story; as important to meditation, and to mental and physical health in general is stimulation. Wim Hof is known as The Iceman, and is a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. He set Guinness world record for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice, and still holds the record for a barefoot half-marathon on ice and snow. I led a series of three sessions on YouTube in the first year of lockdown: 2020, which I called ‘Super Stimulation Week.’ In those sessions I focused on the ideas of Wim Hof and on the value of physical stimulation, and in particular, its role in meditation; I wanted to encourage my viewers to take cold showers–following Wim’s gradual method–to access better energy and health: Day 1 This week, on Thursday the 17th September, it is the six month anniversary of beginning the ‘Compassionate Response to COVID-19 with Mahabodhi’ sessions, the day after Boris Johnson announced his ‘no-gatherings’ policy, launching the UK lockdown. After six months of lockdown, personally I do struggle to keep my energy as bright as it would be under normal circumstances. Yet according to Wim Hof, also known as the ‘Ice Man,’ who we see in action in the video below, we can effectively work with simple breathing techniques and gradual immersion in cold temperatures – such as taking cold showers – to bring physical and mental stimulation to our lives. So as a way of marking this anniversary I want to dub next week ‘Super Stimulation Week,’ and in it focus on the Wim Hof method, or something akin to it. Instead of my normal (non-interactive) sessions on Facebook Live I will be moving over to YouTube and hosting live interactive Zoom classes for an hour at 7.30 every weekday morning. In those sessions I will explore some of Wim’s breathing techniques and try to set us all up with personal programmes for the week to bring more stimulation into our lives. There will be space to feedback our progress within a supportive group. As a well experienced teacher Wim emphasises ‘working at ones’ own pace;’ we always need to tune into our experience and act from there, rather than push our bodies in an ego-based way, a principle I have repeated emphasised in my sessions here. If...
Visitors since 20 March 2024
Users Today : 12
Users Yesterday : 42
This Month : 1031
Total Users : 16188Subscribe via Patreon
Subscribe to my YouTube channel
